Interview: Vicki Michelle in ’Allo ’Allo
2:14pm Friday 29th August 2008
TWENTY-FIVE years after ’Allo ‘Allo! first hit our screens the hilarious comedy is back — and it is coming to a stage near you soon. We spoke to the original sexy French waitress, actress Vicki Michelle.
WHAT do you get when you cross a French café owner, a German commandant, the Gestapo, two clueless British airmen, an all-female resistance, a British spy posing as a police officer and a camp German lieutenant with amusing fake French accents and a large helping of sexual innuendo?
‘Allo ‘Allo of course!
Nobody is more pleased to see the return of the iconic BBC comedy than actress Vicki Michelle, who famously played sexy French waitress Yvette Carte-Blanche in all nine series, and in two subsequent seasons on the West End stage and in a record-smashing tour to Australia and New Zealand.
“For me ’Allo ’Allo is like an old friend,” said Vicki.
“Without even looking at the script all the words come back to me. We have this cabaret song in the show and I remembered all the words."
Playing alongside Vicki, will be Jeffrey Holland as the hapless French café owner, René Artois.
“It’s strange at first to have other people playing the roles you know so well, but the funny thing is that they seem so similar playing the character it’s like having a kind of deja vu.
“Jeffrey is very very good as René. Everyone’s good. It’s a bit maddening actually. I was hoping that I would be the best because I’m an original cast member but I don’t think I will be now!”
For Vicki, ’Allo ’Allo’s appeal was that it could be enjoyed by the whole family.
“’Allo ’Allo was brilliantly written.” she said.
“It was very funny and it was a show the whole family could sit down to watch together in the evening. I get kids of 20-odd saying ‘We grew up with you’ “The kids would laugh at the funny accents and the silly sausage jokes, but the double entendres went over their heads. The parents would laugh at the double meanings. Everyone had their favourite characters.
“We had such fun filming. We were always dressing up as men and the men were dressing up as women. In the end it became normal for us. I remember we were on a break in filming and I was chatting to someone with my fake moustache on and we suddenly realised to anybody else we would look ridiculous and fell about laughing.”
Vicki started out her acting career with a number of straight roles such as in TV series Softly Softly, Minder and The Professionals. She had no idea accepting the role of Yvette would dominate her career.
“I was quite young when I got the part of Yvette and I didn’t realise how it would affect my life so much,” said Vicki.
Vicki still keeps in contact with her old co-stars and not a day goes by that a member of the public doesn’t recognise her.
“I get people saying ‘Listen very carefully, I will say this only once’ and a lot of young men tell me they had their first crush on me. I think ‘Good God, how young were you when you had your first crush?!’ It’s all very flattering though."
l See ’Allo ’Allo at Blackpool Grand Theatre from Monday to Saturday, September 8 to 13. For tickets call 01253 290190. The show also comes to The Lowry, Salford Quays, from Tuesday, December 16, to Saturday, January 10. Box office: 0870 111 2000.